Regardless of whether done under a perverse sense of good faith, or bad, the despicable deed transcends the damage in wrecked “norms,” and with it, the erosion of trust within and integrity outside the highest court in the land. In effect, it served as a naked act of intimidation, predictably fueling a mob aimed at making judges rule based on the threat of force over reason.
The leaker not only irrevocably damaged the Supreme Court but also struck a blow for mob rule over the rule of law—and therefore against justice and civilization itself.
And all in response to a pending decision that would overturn what even leftist luminaries such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg consider to be a dubious one in Roe v. Wade, perversely inventing a right to abortion where there was none, without the consent of the governed, that enabled the termination of tens of millions of lives.
Think about some of the precedents the leak has set, and questions it has raised.
How can judges ever believe their work will be kept private again—a working assumption essential to keeping the judicial branch free and independent?
How can the court proceed given the lack of judgment demonstrated by the official who hired the leaker—presumably the justice on whose staff the leaker worked?
What could said justice do to ever reinstill confidence that he or she is treating his or her office with the sanctity demanded of it? How could we ever trust said justice’s judgment?
And how can we possibly ever deter an act like this in the future?
The injustice at play is compounded by the Biden administration’s egging on of the angered protesters outside judges’ homes—a violation of law, and of the kind of the administration would scream “insurrection” about if its political opponents were doing it.
The hypocrisy is the point. So, too, is the projection.
As for the chief justice, he has always claimed to care above all about preserving the institution of the court.
How can he possibly make the claim he is doing so while presumably sitting on the court’s decision?
With each day that passes, so too does the chance that something horrible happens.
And the longer the court withholds the decision, the more questions there could be about whether the intimidation in the interim worked.
Could the language in the final opinion shift? What about the votes? Improbable maybe, but not impossible.
Sure, the chief justice would say he didn’t hand down the decision in the immediate wake of the leak because the court wouldn’t be bullied into acting, but again, look at what we’re witnessing in real-time: attempted mob justice.
Had he handed the decision down the day after the leak arose, that might have been the only deterrent to future such behavior—that the work of the court wouldn’t be impeded, and then that the leaker would be brought to swift and overwhelming justice.
The broader context makes the leak more devastating.
Recall the duress under which jurors operated in the Derek Chauvin case, and the threat of chaos on the streets should it not have been decided “rightly.”
Recall again the Black Lives Matter riots of the summer of 2020.
Recall the tenants in cities across the country who boarded up their windows before election night that year, anticipating what would happen if the mob didn’t get its way.
